This Moment
by nightcheese27
Summary: "Times like these, when we are both so at peace, are precious to me. They are my whole world. I. Love. You. So. Much." Katniss and Peeta, post-Mockingjay, enjoying a moment of happiness. Originally a one-shot, but you crazy cats convinced me to continue.
1. Chapter 1

Even in my hazy, half-asleep state, I hear the morning rain tapping empty rhythms onto the wooden bedroom floor. _Ugh_. _You have to close the window._ But then I become aware of the smoothly-muscled arm draped over my waist, the leg that had slipped between mine in the night, the steady heartbeat beneath my cheek that brings me to my senses. I curl into his body, his warmth, willing the world to fix itself and leave us alone for once; but the persistent cadence of the rain has a heartbeat of its own, one that I know I will regret ignoring. _Get up and close the window, Katniss._

Cursing nature, I disconnect myself from the tangle that Peeta and I had a routine of becoming, letting his arm fall onto the hollow of the bed that I always filled. Immediately, the chilly spring air, heavy with the rain, cuts me like a knife. The desire to climb back into bed and fall into a coma is overwhelming in my barely-awake, single-track-mind state. As I shuffle to the window – _why are you so far away, you Godforsaken hole in the wall? – _I heard Peeta shift under the covers. His voice barely reaches me over the pulse of the rain.

"Katniss? What are you doing? Come back to bed," he murmurs, his voice thick with sleep. In spite of myself, I smile; I love how catatonic he is in the morning. It's adorable. Over the year or so since we had come back to District Twelve and during the many months we had spent waking up together, this hadn't changed. The nightmares and the flashbacks had become less frequent, but the ache I feel when Peeta isn't with me at any time in the day has only gotten stronger. Mostly things had gotten better, easier, since I told him that I loved him for the first time. I feel less guilty relying on him to help me work through the memories and the dull weight on my body that never really went away. In those moments, the difficult ones, I remember the way that he had smiled when I first told him, remember how happy I had realized then that I make him. It's moments like these, the easy ones, as well as the difficult ones, that make me realize how happy he makes me. How safe I feel in his arms, or even when he's in the room. How loved I feel when he looks at me. It makes staying alive, enduring the weight of my grief, worth it to see him smile like that.

I glance back at him, tousled and careless in the humidity, rubbing sleep from his eyes and squinting to see me in the gray light. "It's raining," I say softly. "I have to close the window." He nods, apparently satisfied with this explanation, and lets his head fall back onto the pillow.

I continue to the window, cursing when I step in the icy puddle that has gathered below the window. I push the window shut, muttering profanity and hopping over to the rug to rub my foot dry before falling back into the bed. Too tired to maneuver my body into its previous, comfortable position, I leave my head level with Peeta's stomach, my eyes tracing over the muscles under his bare skin for a split second before they close again.

"Katniss."

I groan, not opening my eyes, wishing for sleep.

"Katniss, you have to wipe the water off the floor, too." Since when is Peeta the voice of reason?

"I could care less about the floor right now. The weather's awful, so I don't have to get up today. New rule." I realize then how cold I am again and break my fetal position for just long enough to scramble for the blanket and drag it over my head, still a foot from my pillow.

I hear Peeta sigh and feel his absence as soon as he sits up on the edge of our bed. The moment I hear the metallic click of his prosthetic leg, guilt overflows within me, and I lift the blanket over my head to watch him hobble to the bathroom for towels to spread over the puddle. What kind of person am I, making him get up and put on his prosthetic so early in the morning because I'm too lazy? Whenever I brought up any sort of guilt involving his leg since we had returned to Twelve, be it in nightmares or situations like these, he always reassured me that it wasn't my fault, I had done my best and saved his life, he still loved me. So I just wait until he returns to bed, not bothering to take off the prosthetic again, and resettles under the covers, shifting lower so that our faces are level. I'm sure his feet are hanging off the end of the bed – mine are right on the edge.

His eyes are still sleepy as he reaches for my waist to pull me into him. His arm stretches out to provide me with a pillow, and I smile as he placed a gentle, morning kiss on my nose.

"Thanks for doing that," I murmur, trailing my fingers from his cheek down his neck and then to the arm wrapped around me, tracing circles onto his shoulder. "I don't deserve you. I'm too lazy."

"I think you have a right to be," he says, closing his eyes as he exhales, content. Times like these, when we are both so at peace, are precious to me. It took me years of loss and grief to see that, to appreciate it, to get here – a place where, for seconds or sometimes even minutes at a time, I am living in the present and not in the painful past. In our first Games, these moments meant nothing to me. Now they are my whole world.

"Maybe we should stop sleeping with the windows open," I suggest, moving my fingers down to his bicep, mapping out more lazy circles.

"It's relaxing, though," he answers, his voice almost at a whisper. I switch tracing words onto his forearm. _Window. Rain. Relaxing. I. Love. You. So. Much._

Almost as if he knows what I'm writing with my fingers, he smiles, and for a moment it takes my breath away. "We'll keep it, then. I think we can handle it."

His eyes flutter open as he presses his forehead to my temple. A smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

"Well, now_ I_ don't deserve _you_," he whispers. And just as I turn further into him and just barely press my lips to his, my stomach growls loudly, twisting through my entire body and breaking our early-morning spell. Peeta laughs, and it's the loudest thing I've heard so far today.

"I guess it's time for breakfast," he says, throwing back the covers and sitting up for the second time. As I squirm back into the warmth, he grabs my hand and laces his fingers through mine, dragging me up with him. I complain as he pulls me out of the bedroom and into the hall, not even bothering to put a shirt on, leaving the pattern of skin grafts on his torso exposed; by the time we reach the stairs, I'm so indignant that he releases my hand – but by the time I've tried to make a run for it back to the bedroom, he is bending down, grabbing my legs, and swooping me over his bare shoulder. As he walks down the stairs with me in tow, careful not to bump me into the wall, my protests turn into laughter, and by the time he sets me down on the couch in the living room, I'm reaching for his neck to pull him down for a kiss.

He pulls away after just a couple, intent on feeding me. "What are you in the mood for?" he calls from the kitchen. I watch his muscles contract and relax as he pulls open the refrigerator, checks the pantry to see how much bread we have left (a lot, as always), starts the coffee maker. I hate the stuff, but Peeta practically inhales it every morning, so Plutarch gave him one for our first Christmas back in District Twelve. It was only after he had reassured Peeta that it was made in a new, non-Capitol-affiliated factory in District Three that Peeta would open the box.

"How about pancakes?" I ask, recalling the syrup we had tapped in the forest the week before. Looking at the spile that Haymitch had quietly lent us was impossible without thinking of clocks, ocean-themed wedding cakes, and sugar cubes. That had been a difficult day. But today would be an easy day. At least, I hoped so.

"Pancakes it is, then," Peeta says, smiling at me as he moves to pull out materials – flour, eggs, frying pan. His eyes are carefree, not intensified by the quiet concentration that overtakes him when he bakes, nor clouded with the violent memories of hijacking that threaten to consume him, nor brimming with concern as he shakes me from my nightmares and holds me in the dark.

When he asks me to get the syrup out of the pantry and I set the heavy glass jar onto the counter next to his busy hands, he pauses and looks at me. In his eyes, I see the memories growing foggier, weighing down the boy I know, the boy I love; hardly panicking anymore, I uncurl his tense fingers from the mixing bowl and wooden spoon he is close to snapping and massage warmth into his hands.

"Peeta? Peeta, look at me, "I say, relieved that my voice sounds so calm. "Peeta? It isn't real. _This_ is real, you and me." I squeeze his hands. His eyes won't meet mine; they are fixed on something beyond my elbow, so I press my lips to his, counting on this to do it. I tell myself that it will because it always has, but deep down I'm terrified that one day it won't work and he'll really be gone.

But today, right now, in this moment, it does work; I feel his hands soften slightly as he deepens the kiss, one of his hands finding my waist and the other caressing my cheek. I place both of my hands on the nape of his neck, where I know he is sensitive, and this erases the hallucination completely. _Thank God, _I think. _One more day with him._

He breaks the kiss, but rests his forehead on mine. I do my best to smile. "I love you," I say; my voice is quiet, but strong.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers. He moves his other hand to my cheek so that they are both tracing my cheekbones. "I love you, too. So much."

I smile; I am trying to lighten the mood, but I also can't help but feel the eternal weight on my heart lift slightly when he says this. I hope, more than anything, that I never lose this feeling.

"Well then, make me some pancakes!" Peeta smiles, but the sadness is still visible in his eyes, set deeper, it seems, in his now-pale skin. I wish I had the power to erase the last 60 seconds, erase the last three years, erase all the losses that haunt us. _But if the last three years hadn't happened, you wouldn't be with Peeta the way you are right now. You don't have the power to erase anything, so what's the point in trying? All you can do is work through it, day by day. Moment by moment._

Peeta continues with the pancakes, adding lemon juice and vanilla the way his father taught him to. _Please, God, don't let this trigger anything._ I stay by his side, weaving my arm around his waist, tracing more words over the canvas of his bare back. _Syrup. Flashback. Worried. Please. Stay. With. Me._

It is only after another glance at the glass jar of syrup that I solidify my decision – every movement, every word, every action must be thought through and considered carefully in the aftermath of a flashback. Feeling playful, I separate from Peeta and move quickly across the floor to the bowl of flour on the opposite counter; by the time he has turned around to see where I went, I have scooped up a tablespoon of flour in the palm of my hand and launched it at his face.

The cloud of white colliding with his still-pale skin reminds me for a split second of what it must have looked like above ground in District Thirteen when the Capitol was dropping bombs – the very same attack that Peeta had warned us about hours before, to his own punishment. But this bomb, this explosion of white ash settling on the floor, on the bridge of his nose, in his tousled hair, evokes initial shock and, seconds later, incredulous laughter as opposed to super-extended fear and the burning hatred of war. This war is made audible by screams of laughter as Peeta reaches across me to scoop up more flour and release it right above my head; I can only imagine how strange I look with the contrast of white flour and dark hair. Peeta would look absolutely ghostly if he weren't smiling triumphantly.

It is then when I run, since he has grabbed the entire bowl of flour and I am unarmed. As I duck behind the table, he launches more flour into the air, covering us both – as well as the surrounding furniture – in a thin white dust. I am shrieking with laughter as he chases me through the living room and around the entire first floor of our house; it is only when we reach the couch again that he catches me in his arms from behind, spinning me around as I curl my legs to my chest, still laughing. Just as we fall onto the couch, the entire bowl of flour lands bottom-down on the floor and the contents of the bowl explode into the air. And even though we know what a huge, ridiculous mess it is and that we will have to clean it up eventually, we look at each other and burst out laughing again, so hard that I end up falling from my precarious perch on the edge of his lap and rolling on the flour-covered ground, still hysterical, before he picks me up and settles me comfortably on his lap, wrapping his arms securely around my body, still quivering with laughter. His lips find my hair (undoubtedly covered in flour) and then my neck, where I'm sure he feels my pulse racing with the energy of the chase. I lift my hand to his dusty, ghostly-pale cheek, and smile again.

"You look pretty scary right now," I say, breathing heavily.

"Oh, yeah?" His lips move to the hollow just below my jaw, and my stomach contracts with excitement the way it always does when he tells me that he loves me. _Please, God, never let me lose this feeling._

"Yeah," I say, suddenly breathless. I am vaguely aware of the ache in my cheeks from smiling so much.

His lips are trailing up my cheek, leaving a path through the field of flour. I feel his breath as he chuckles. "Well," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice, "I think you're beautiful. So, so beautiful."

My heart swells in my chest, filling the room. _I love you. So, so much._ "Well, I think you're trying to get out of cleaning all this" – I gesture with my arm to the room at large – "up. Not that I can blame you…"

His kisses cross my cheekbone, running over the bridge of my nose before he plants a final one on the tip of my nose. "How about we finish making breakfast and leave it here for Haymitch?" His lips are less than an inch from mine. I imagine electricity sparking between us, bridging the minute gap.

My smile grows even wider. "I think that sounds like a great idea." I lift one of his hands to my floury cheek and press my lips to his, smiling into the kiss as his other hands winds into my hair. He leaves his hand on my cheek even as I slide mine from underneath his and move it to his cheek instead, my fingers absently tracing words onto his skin, vaguely aware that they will show up, faint shadows forming mazes through the layer of flour on parts of his face.

_Pancakes. Hunger. Love. This. Moment. Is. Perfect._


	2. Chapter 2

As promised, we don't clean up the flour. We finish making the pancakes together, with him standing behind me and his arms overlapping mine as our entwined hands slowly work as one. With me smiling involuntarily the whole time and him constantly stopping to plant kisses on my neck and cheek, it takes us an hour to make a single batch of pancakes, but the end result is worth it – they melt in our mouths as we stretch out perpendicular to one another on the flour-covered tile, my head resting on his firm stomach. Effie would have a stroke if she saw us eating like this – forgoing silverware, plates, shame. Who needs it? The meal is slow and warm and comfortable, and I smile when I see Peeta dip his folded pancake straight into the jar of syrup. _That's us, right there. Breaking tradition._

The fun ends when Greasy Sae, who still insists on doing random check-ups on our living state and (occasionally) help out with the housework, walks in the door and immediately begins screaming profanity at the two of us for making such a huge mess. All Peeta and I can do is laugh as she thrusts her umbrella at us and sprays us with rainwater; we roll around on the ground, hysterical until his shoulder knocks over the jar of syrup, to which Sae yells, "WONDERFUL, NOW IT'S STICKY TOO!" before she slams the container of stew she brought onto the counter and stalks out the door, still muttering. She accents a few choice curses, though, and this only makes me laugh harder.

"You know," Peeta says after the slam of the door has stopped reverberating in our ears, "I don't think we've laughed this much in a while." He's still lying on the floor, maneuvering around the steadily growing puddle of amber. The realization that we will have to use the spile to get more syrup again is a sobering thought, but I push it away as quickly as it appeared.

I twist around on the floor and army crawl a foot forward to snatch an already-damp washcloth from the counter, then turn to throw it to Peeta. He catches it, having been watching me move with a light of amusement in his eyes.

"We won't be laughing when we're the only ones cleaning _all_ of this up," I say, carving a wavy line into the layer of flour on the tile. I watch Peeta struggle to reach the spot on his back where the syrup has caught him, twisting both arms every which way. "Here, let me."

I move over to him again, where he hands me the towel. He sits facing away from, his good leg curled under his left outstretched prosthetic. I settle myself behind him, extending both of my legs to press against his, and I'm glad that his long flannel pants cover the cool metal and plastic of his prosthetic. I wipe the syrup off from the spot below his left shoulder blade that he couldn't reach, chuckling when I think about how ridiculous we must look; when it's clean, I press my forehead into the warm skin covering his spine and the smooth muscles surrounding it. His left hand runs up and down my leg, and I feel him tracing something into my skin with his finger – letters? Words, like I had done earlier?

"What are you writing?" I say into the warmth of his skin.

His fingers don't stop as he speaks. "I don't know, try and figure it out."

So I try hard to concentrate on the movements of his fingers – I know his handwriting. I've seen it in recipe books, on memos recording phone messages, transforming thoughts into impromptu love notes left around the house.

Jagged lines traveling vertically across the top of my thigh. _A._

Straight, simple strokes edging closer to my knee. _L._

Multiple lines crossing over my kneecap. _W._

The back of his smooth thumbnail tracing intersecting outlines on my shin. _A._

His finger bending and swirling onto my calf. _Y._

The curve of his final letter tingling on the side of my ankle. _S._

His hand goes back to ghosting up and down my leg as my heart rate increases and tears of pure emotion well in my eyes.

_Stay with me?_

_ Always._

I withdraw my leg from under his hand as I kneel to press my lips to the back of his neck, the sensitive part. Soon he has turned enough to bring my mouth to his, both of his hands tangling in my hair. When he starts to lean back, his palm moves to the small of my back, and he takes me down with him effortlessly. My knees press into the floor on either side of him, and on the left one, I can still feel the imprint of the _W_ burning into my skin. We lie on the floor, our lips moving for the first time that morning not with the light-hearted joy we cultivated in our laughter, but with the deepened passion that comes with the gratitude for life that only he could unearth within me. _I love you. So much._

When my hand, fixed to the floor to support majority of my weight above Peeta, slides an inch forward, it lands in something sticky. I break the kiss for a second to glance at my hand and, sure enough, the puddle of syrup has expanded. _Maybe there_ is _some logic to wiping things off the floor._ Peeta turns his head to see what I'm looking at and we both burst out laughing when we come back to our senses. "Maybe Sae was right to yell at us," I suggest, reaching for the washcloth near his head. I roll off of him, maneuvering back into a sitting position next to him and crossing my legs as I scrub my hand clean. I glance up, catching his eye, and the way he looks at me is so full of love I feel the familiar prick of tears behind my pupils again. _So, so much._

"I don't know about that," Peeta says thoughtfully. "We're already being punished with the rain – we're stuck inside all day. Isn't that enough?"

I raise my eyebrows. "When has the-" In my mind I complete the sentence: _When has the world ever stopped at enough punishment with us?_ But I know that saying this out loud will only hurt him. His eyes are clear, free of the clouded doubts that I know will never really go away, but I don't want to risk anything. I never want to risk anything.

This all passes through my head in a split second, and my pause would go unnoticed by anyone who didn't know me inside out. Peeta knows me inside out, but I know I should cover it up anyway. So out loud, I say, "When has the rain kept going all day? It'll be over by afternoon. We'll just wait it out." His eyes, only because I know him inside out, tell me he senses something is off. Thankfully, though, the moment passes; he takes my hand to pull me to my feet and kiss my forehead. I press my sticky palm into his bare chest and smile at the barely-visible mark it leaves behind. He catches my hand, fans out my fingers, and presses his outstretched hand against it; the sticky residue glues us together, binding us in the midst of our floury warzone. I hold the moment close to my heart as thousands of unspoken words pass through our eyes. _You and I, we are so much. So, so much._

I don't want to break the magic that has somehow graced us with such a good morning, but it's difficult to deny the fact that our house is a mess. While Peeta collects bowls and wooden spoons and glass jars in the kitchen, I maneuver the vacuum cleaner around the whole first floor of our house, trying to get all the flour off the hardwood. When the furniture is (decently) clean, I join Peeta in the kitchen again as we scrub the floor clean of syrup. It's a challenge, so he insists that we stop for frequent kissing breaks. It slows down the work, and by now I really just want a clean house, but I can't deny him – or myself – any of the smiles that spread across our faces when our lips part, infectious reminders of how great life can be.

When the house is clean, we spend the day holed up inside. He paints. He helps me paint a picture that isn't horrendous, standing behind me and maneuvering my hands and arms with his own again. I sit in the armchair with my legs draped over the arm and he sketches me. I try my hand at sketching him sitting him at the kitchen table. It does not work. I scrap it and make him stick figure drawings until he sees how hard I'm trying not to laugh, rises from his chair to see my progress, and collapses laughing, bringing me down with him in a kiss.

Only after we see more flour smeared from Peeta's bare back and hair onto our clean floor does he raise his eyebrows suggestively. "I know how we can get clean," he says; the playful, joking seduction in his voice makes me think of Finnick, but on happy terms. I can't help but smile.

We intertwine our hands, forget to put on shoes, and run outside into what has become a full-blown storm. Thunder claps above us, rain runs down our faces and hair and backs, and when the gray of the sky lights up, it is absolutely electrifying.

For a split second, I remember the lighting tree in the Quarter Quell. I remember the worry laced through Peeta's reluctance to be separated from me, the quick kiss that we shared to reassure ourselves of our safety. _How far away can you possibly get from the truth?_ That was the last time we had kissed before he was hijacked, before I lost him. Before he came back to me. Before we made a new life amidst the grief and the ghosts, a life comprised of moments. _This. Moment. Is. Perfect. _And that's where we are right now, our fingers clasped tight, running around our front lawn, crossing into all the lawns of the Victor's Village, finally letting the rain wash away the ashes of our war. _He'll never really be the same again._ My feet are freezing, and it doesn't matter. _But maybe that's okay._ Peeta is laughing, I am laughing, and as I slip in a patch of mud and land on my back, my hand pulls his down, and he collapses next to me; the hand not holding mine moves to my cheek, and he turns my laughing face towards his. _Maybe we'll get through this, you and I._ Still not letting go of my hand, he pulls me by my waist into the curve of his body, where I fit perfectly – always have, always will. _Maybe, one day, we'll be okay._ As he presses his lips to mine, his hand floating back to my soaking hair, my laugh continues underneath the kiss, and I feel home.

_Maybe, just maybe, that day will be today._


End file.
